how do you mix magic with science without one eating over the other.
>>98499880heir is a clear difference between even the game itself in settings that have discovered science vs ones that don't , its like science rapes metaphysics forevereven at the abstract mechanics ever.it changes how everyone looks at what is the intended "correct" way to think , I feel. I heard that 40k does it really well , but as far as I know its just fluff since its a war game. science tends to try to overwrite what magic in the narative sense , while magic rapes the science in a mechanics sense ( most of the time).
>>98499880another interesting example is guns. if you have guns should your whole setting be about guns?
>>98499890but its clearly not just about setting , since that then goes into how the game is played fundamentally.
Magic exploits glitches in reality, science leverages repetition and knowledge. A combination of it would be like if an engineer had access to things that broke physics. For example, magical sources of power, powering machinery that needs a power source that otherwise wouldn't be practical. Or imagine if some Ford esc tycoon managed to mass produce spell scrolls using machinery.
>>98499880The magic is a technology. It is an application of the natural forces of the world and all the mechanical bits and bobs are just an offshoot of that.Even still, there is phenomenon that can't be controlled, replicated, or properly observed that still exists and the best you can do is guesstimate with the certainty of gravity at best.
>>98499915the interesting part is that tecnically in a lot of medival setting science and magic do actually mix pretty well , and constanly.its only when the tecnology becomes more industrial that problems start to happen , I wonder if the problem is that the science becomes more higher concept , but the magic lags behind.
>>98500052It's because magic was always just science or attempts at science (with or without good methodology), and as science develops (as an ordered way of approaching questions), it discards the trappings of magic as they prove unhelpful for answering questions about how the world works and how it may be influenced.There was a time when advanced mathematics were looked at as magical. Chemistry. Medicine. There is no conflict between magic and science. Science is just magic better practiced.
>>98500075Unless it's a setting where science kills magic through the power of anchoring reality through rational understanding. See Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
>>98499880I mean... does something like Dune, count?
>>98499880They figured that out in the 70's, anon
>>98499880Science are the things you can do and you understand the mechanism behind why they work. Magic are the things you can do that you don't understand the mechanism behind why they work.
Why do you assume they're different things?Science is just about how to approach any knowledge, no matter it's aboout civil engineering, chemistry or magic rituals. In most RPGs magic is scientific by definition: you need it to be predictable. A wizards know that if he makes that specific cast he'll get a firewall that will make that amount of damage. If you publish a survey of firewall results in a paper format, that's science.The only non-scientific magic would be the one in some horror RPGs, where supernatural things can happen without any internal logic just to keep characters on their toes and take away the feeling of safety from them.
>>98499880Set limits. Have magic and science interact differently towards the same object while using similar methods.
>>98499880My take would be having the magic buff the technology. For example, accelerating normal bullets to railgun speed, removing air resistance on a vehicle, etc. That way the magic is just building on and improving on the mundane invention.
Arcanum solved this problem long ago, albeit I would not be that extreme about it. I just make it incredibly straining on a person to use cybernetics and magic at the same time.
>>98499880Treat it like nen from Hunter x Hunter. What people know of magic relies on a very consistent and repeatable set of principles that in theory every human being can accomplish, such that even lay people can test for it and even children able to master the basics with practice. It’s the outliers and exceptions to the rule that’s where shit gets weird and confusing, and those are still being studied to this day to understand the WHY regarding being unique. Plus, despite it being something theoretically anyone can do, the vast majority do not have either access to the full knowledge of how to do so, so technology and tools are still important to keeping the world running. Plus, there is shit that nen/magic can’t do on a mass scale like transportation or manufacture.Basically, magic is a known thing, and the best nen users/magicians are still gods among men. But such gods are one in a billion, and a gun is still a gun. And gods have been brought low before, even before nukes were a thing.
>>98499880>how do you mix magic with science without one eating over the other.During Middle Ages, science was interchangeable with magic. Scholars were also astrologist and occultists.
>>98500043>The magic is a technologyI hate this interpretation: it sucks all of the *magic* out of magic.In my setting magic happens when you think something impossible, such as a reddish green, or a yellowish blue, and in that moment when the players/GM are failing to comprehend that idea, you get to sneak something impossible into the world.It doesn't affect the crunch in any way, but fluff is part of a game too, despite the wannabe janny's insistence otherwise!
Science is just misunderstood magic. The world runs on whimsy and desire and the souls that inhabit the world, and there are some things that they all mostly subconsciously agree on, that people mistake for laws of physics.
By making it like how magic is irl. It is just communion with demons.
>>98499880The same as it was in the not too distant past of our own world: the scientists and the magicians are the same people, its just that some of what they were working with is reliable and some is still mysterious. The different between alchemy and science is literally just writing down your results and seeing if anyone else is seeing the same shit you are when you try this experiment. Isaac Newton was a practicing sorcerer who codified the math behind physics to try to make more spells that would actually work. Thats not even a joke, look it up.Magic are powerful rules of the world that we can see but not understand. Science is trying to glean those rules and understand why they work through repetition and recording the results until we have a complete map of what happens to A if B. So you mix magic and science by having some rules that magicians follow, and many theories about why it works that way, but most of the theories are contradictory and wrong and no one actually knows WHY this works just that it does, but people are working on pushing the frontier of that knowledge. Sometimes with disastrous results. You, the worldbuilder, can have established the hard rules of magic that remain consistent, but so long as the people within the world you made do not have that same understanding they are fumbling in the dark trying to figure out those rules by trial and error, which is science. But until they HAVE that understanding, what they are doing remains dangerous and mystical, especially to everyone else who isn't as well learned in the subject of magic.
>>98501608Okay but you're just doing the samething but disguising it by butchering semantics. You have created a set of different fundamental laws that reality operates under, not "magic". You can call it "impossible" or against natural law or whatever but the fact it exists means it is by definition not impossible or exist outside of natural law.
>>98502410This. If a wizard can cast the Fireball spell by following the instructions and gets a fireball every time they do it so long as they haven't personally messed up a step, its a science. It doesn't matter if the flavor text says that you are pulling unstable energies from another plane of existence in violation of the natural law, if it works *every time you do it* that makes it a reliable, repeatable result. To claim otherwise is to want the benefit of being able to pretend that magic is mysterious without it ever being mysterious in a way that is inconvenient to the power fantasy of throwing around fireballs on command. On the flip side, if magic *isn't* repeatable and reliable, it is incomprehensible. Actually unusable in the context of a tabletop game, which by definition MUST run on rules even if those rules are more social than algorithmic, but also unusable in a worldbuilding sense because if every spell does a random effect every time you have it you don't actually have spells. You have a single button that is labeled 'press to make a magic happen' and no one is strongly incentivized to press it because why would you when you have no idea or control over what the result may be? You want to heal your broken leg and you are just as likely to give the guy you hate most in the world the most impressive dick anyone has ever seen.
>>98499880That depends on if you mean the weak asshole>magic is just perspectiveapproach, or the actual>magic is beyond the nature of existenceapproach.It also depends on if you're using science in terms of what it means, instead of the faggot lemming approach that just follows literature.
>>98500075yea , but that is a cucked mentality I think.acurate but cucked , mostly because I am not entirely sure what exactly was that enlightenment in pure simple rational scientific steps. its mostly talking indirectly though concepts , like a magitian does.
>>98500295that would be interesting , because it would imply science as we understand it would just be another layer of metaphysics.>In most RPGs magic is scientific by definition: you need it to be predictable. A wizards know that if he makes that specific cast he'll get a firewall that will make that amount of damage. If you publish a survey of firewall results in a paper format, that's science.one could argue magic is a fractal that both changes from being scientific and unscientific though.
>>98500660so have the magic undercut the science and the science undercut the science in a way that then makes them like a married couple.I think that could be interesting if done well , but you would have to make an entire system for that , from the groud up
>>98502479This is what happens when you let an ENTJ pretend he's an INTP. It's not enough that the wizard can reproduce it, everyone has to be able to reproduce it. The whole value in science is establishing the fungibility of the actor and that's just not the case in the fantasy game world. >Can't run a game without rules for magic and never ever make a mistake uh uhhhBoy you are retarded. There is first of all a slew of dice less free form games that do just that, secondly magic is more fun when its magical and not the engineers trying to get revenge on everyone for letting them out of their dank little engineering holes. If that means I have to say>No Zholodomir the mighty, your fireball does not cast For no reason other then I need you to stop fireballing everything and give everyone a chance to contribute? It's A okay. And if you want to kick up a stink about it?>Doors right over there with your nogames bucko
>>98499880There's a few ways. Arcanum made magic and technology antithetical, so that being strong at one made interactions with the other fail. (Magic disrupted tech, tech disrupted magic.)But that's not the only way. You could instead go with making magic be a pre-scientific version of a respectable modern discipline like thaumatology (just as in reality, alchemy became chemistry as it was made scientific). There, you're just talking about the application of the scientific method to "magical" things, with the true underlying laws of that part of the setting's universe eventually laid bare for manipulation into some form of magitech.Basically, you can do anything you want, providing you make it believable to your players (or readers, if that's what you're doing with the setting; a good setting has many possible uses).
>>98499880magitech
>>98499880It's not that hard. Fate solved the whole thing two decades ago.>True Magic is actual miracles which only a handful of individuals can achieve and perform>all other magic is people trying to recreate these miracles with inferior spellcraft, some success cases but mostly failures all around, everyone wants to discover the next True Magic regardless, and an entire society has formed around this pursuit>science is literally just science as we know it, which is more efficient overall than magic but can never come close to the miracles of True Magic
>>98502181>The different between alchemy and science is literally just writing down your results and seeing if anyone else is seeing the same shit you are when you try this experimentI am pretty sure alchemist did wrote their results , although they were hyper individualists about it.alchemy is still an interesting example though.
>>98502479>On the flip side, if magic *isn't* repeatable and reliable, it is incomprehensible. Actually unusable in the context of a tabletop game, which by definition MUST run on rules even if those rules are more social than algorithmicI mean , you could lore out that playing the game is some kind of ritual that makes the magic more consistent , in the same way that you could curse someone to always kill their wife with every action they make , that would limit their actions.
>>98503159>You could instead go with making magic be a pre-scientific version of a respectable modern discipline like thaumatology (just as in reality, alchemy became chemistry as it was made scientific). There, you're just talking about the application of the scientific method to "magical" things, with the true underlying laws of that part of the setting's universe eventually laid bare for manipulation into some form of magitech.I wonder if the reverse could also be interesting , for example chemestry is a specific small aspect of alchemy , but if you have an entire team of chemist as an alchemist you get to do so much more than you could do otherwise , because they are almost like high tech computers for you. so magic tries to use science as a force multiplyer.
>>98503156>This is what happens when you let an ENTJ pretend he's an INTP. It's not enough that the wizard can reproduce it, everyone has to be able to reproduce it. The whole value in science is establishing the fungibility of the actor and that's just not the case in the fantasy game world.By this logic basketball is magic because not everyone can jump the same height and some people have a natural advantage over others at the sport.
>>98503181Magus Bride has a similar split. A magus can see spirits and barter with them for power like a kind of magical banker, bumming magic off of one spirit to perform favors for another in return for more magic or other benefits. A sorcerer/alchemist knows that spirits *exist*, but usually do not have the innate sight needed to see an interact with them directly. So instead they have to use a hyper-autistic level of focus and study to squeeze the maximum effect out of what small scraps of magic they can access without ever actually being able to see the magical world.As a result a magus can perform incredible magic feats with ease, but knows very little about how it works compared to a sorcerer. A magus could never build a magical computer, they never have any reason to get that deep into the minutia how how the physics of magic particles work. But what a magus CAN do is make a phone call to a friend, loan them 3.50, and call down a living bolt of lightning that they straddle like a horse and then ride to cross the entire planet in seconds.
>>98500043>>98501608I think anon meant that magic is a tecnology in the sense that magic is the use of will for results in reality way , rather than magic isn't real way.tarot is tecnically future reading tecnology , but that doesn't mean you will understand it better doing a bunch of studies on it.
>>98500233Dune from what I know is a kino example , but I don't know nothing about dune.
>>98500075>>98500295>>98500733>>98502181>>98502410>>98502479>>98503365science undercutting magic.my problem with something like that , is that under this definition of science , science isn't actually a specific thing , its just one way to call someone who knows whats up , science should be a truelly neutral concept that could allow anything.but that is not how people see science , that isn't how you see science , they see it as something philosophically monogamus.science isn't really an actual thing under this arguments , the arguments logic is fine. but science is just a relational state regarding to what understanding you see as being true within scale or something being consistent , it makes the label useless.its the wonderfag problem but for science.I guess you could descrive as what people see as science as just semi materialistic modern metaphysics , and have science be the practial use and understanding of those metaphysics , but would people really accept for example a super emotion brainded no logic in her brain tarot reader to be a better "scientist" than a genuis giga chad. >>98501785magic undercutting sciencemost people aren't really spiritually strong enough to think of science as just another form of magic , its just not something they can stomac , but most importantly isn't interesting to them , I guess it could still work though.but would guns be something that everyone would have to use , if they were a thing.unless you want everyone to be a super man I suppose , can you avoid the might of guns , because in some ways the might of guns is the might of science.
>>98502181>>98503391this reminds me of a definition of science vs magic that I have, and basically the only one I see as correct other than "being correct at everything".magic is about creating and vitality , its about thinking in analogues concept separate from scale and creating stuff that didn't exist before. and science is about dexterity within what allready exists , its about seeing everything as a wierd digital fractal of scale , a fractal that you try to become more and more dexterous to get more and more inside of , because on a scientific understandings of things , everything is an illusion except the tinniest scale possible , the worship of the true atom.so the closer you get to the atom the more "correct" you are , the more power you have. but is overall about how precise you can about interacting with everything , its about being more precise with your actions rather than becoming better or gaining new actions. new idea how that would work within a system , other than maybe those 2 things being stats or something.
>>98499880I don't.Science and magic are conceptually opposed.Science is based on repeatable experiments and the observations built upon them."Occultism", which is what we mean by "magic" actually means "That which is occluded", aka, obscure.Magic isn't supposed to work on rational principles of replicable experimentation.Magic is fundamentally, about tricking the universe, and not showing your work, and dealing with comoddities that defy measurement, and entities that evade definition.Science is the realm of the known, and magic is the realm of the unknown.They are mutually corrosive in my fundamental understanding.The "Magic and science negate each other" trope, is actually deeper than people give it credit for.
>>98499880Do you even know what ''science'' means? I genuinely need to know, OP, because without clear definition of the word the starting question is moot.
>>98499880the way i see it, magic and science is like the difference between art and industry: magic is an art form because there's no "right" way to practice magic. there's hundreds of different rituals, trappings, and customs wrapped up in each culture that practices a bit differently. you'll find that a lot of it is unnecessary from a practical standpoint: you don't NEED to use a certain shaman outfit or powder from a certain plant to achieve the desired result, but all of the customs add a unique flavor: a fingerprint that makes each artist unique.science and technology are all about achieving predictable, consistent, economically scalable results that will never be as refined or high quality as an artisan, but 10,000 AR-15s with plastic stocks will beat a dozen samurai in handmade armor forged with dragon's blood.
>>98503512>my problem with something like that , is that under this definition of science, science isn't actually a specific thing Yes, that is what science is. Someone didn't create something specific and go "this is science". Science is just the word we use for the study of how reality works under human observation. A label being broad doesn't make it useless so long as it doesn't overlap 1:1 with another word.
>>98499880The barrier between the the two is based on knowledge. Magic in olden times was just "how the world works" to the people of the time. The idea that magic is different from or at odds with science is entirely because of cultural resistance to industrialization.If you have an enlightened or post-industrial setting then your magic is just science of that world. There is no way out of that without doing a "secret magical society" harry potter thing where for some reason the wizards keep their power secret so even if there is a scientific explanation, they're not telling you. How magical the magic is is how well known the explanation is. If it's magic a post-enlightenment time then there are some people who are starting to piece together the greater mystery, but mostly just academics. Which is how DnD wizards are kind of written to be. They know the science, their party members don't. So it remains magic. If you have an industrialized more modern setting then the magic is better understood and the masses are educated enough to treat the magic like we do electricity. There's no escaping science consuming magic in a setting because it's literally just a matter of how well understood the magic and natural world are in the setting. In an actual game the only difference between a wizard and a scifi programmer is the flavor text of the giant glowing hand they're summoning. Is it magical light or is it a hard light holographic projection? Literally just flavor.
>>98499880Science is measured and studied all the way through, magic is measured and studied in the intermediate stage, but becomes entirely vibe based in the advanced stage.
>>98512031>There's no escaping science consuming magic in a setting because it's literally just a matter of how well understood the magic and natural world are in the setting.>magic doesn't have predictable constants and done!
>>98512122>magic doesn't have predictable constantsHow would you go about implementing this within a tabletop game ruleset?
That people think there’s a difference between magic and science makes me hate the average iq of the human race. It’s a red flag for retardation. It implies they don’t know the origins of magic or science, or religion. They’ve had it so good they’ve become so fucking DUMB.A wizard and a cleric and a scientist were the same fucking thing in medieval times.
The conflict between magic and science is a forced one. It does not make sense.
>>98512448It’s a good thing that most people play elf games that don’t place in real world medieval times then.
>>98512453It only makes sense in ignorant perception, not objective essence. This ignorant perception is even a part of the fun; people not able or refusing to see the parallels and ironies.This is why the Church is such a great villainous organization. Pretending their magic isn’t magic. The greatest magic trick of all is perhaps convincing others that something *isn’t* magic, so as to better isolate, manipulate and monopolize its use/perception.The priests of the Church weren’t stupid enough to think their attempted demon summoning wasn’t what it was. Exorcism comes from black magic. It is a variant of demonology.
>>98512467Good thing most people play elf games where the various churches don’t need to summon demons, huh?
>>98512457>elf gamesElves are cases of sufficiently advanced aliens. Wonder and mystery apply.
>>98512448>A wizard and a cleric and a scientist were the same fucking thing in medieval times.You couldn't be more wrong and stupid, saying such a retarded thing as this. There were many Christian scholars, like monks, yes, but there were arguably even more secular scholars as well that held no position in the church (such as bored nobles researching physics, inventors among the laypeople, apothecaries and barber-chirurgeons who performed primitive medical practices, etc.). None of the groups aforementioned had any relation to wizards, which was a pejorative akin to witchcraft (despite pop culture, witches and wizards were primarily considered fraudsters in most of Europe throughout history, with the Church dedicating a great deal of time disproving their bogus claims of magic). There's a reason why these professions are not usually lumped together in history or in fantasy settings. It's because they are very different.
>>98512482Except in those elf games where they’re all natives to the planet they’re living on and by definition can’t be aliens.How’s it going by the way, wonderfag?
>>98512483>You couldn't be more wrong and stupidThe stereotypical wizard is derived from scholastic monks like Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus. These individuals didn’t even see themselves as wizards, their wizardly repute was enough. > but there were arguably even more secular scholars as well that held no position in the church (such as bored nobles researching physics, inventors among the laypeople, apothecaries and barber-chirurgeons who performed primitive medical practices, etc.).Cool. Many still had sponsors in the Church despite not being in the Church themselves; figures like Galileo Galilei had patrons within the Church who had supported his views and theories. Isaac Newton was a devout believer in God, as well as a heretic in regards to the Trinity.If you think non-monks or non-Church affiliated individuals weren’t heavily pious or religious individuals, you’re dead wrong. Christianity went in line with higher natural learning more than Islam ever did, which is why you had the occasional Persian (the Persian culture was an intellectual one even before the anti intellectual Arabs forced Islam on them) polymath disparage the Quran as “utterly useless”. >such as bored nobles researching physics, inventors among the laypeople, apothecaries and barber-chirurgeons who performed primitive medical practices, etc.How many of those individuals didn’t believe in God or the veracity of the bible? Leonard Euler, arguably THE greatest mathematician in history, was a firm believer in the Bible. >None of the groups aforementioned had any relation to wizards, which was a pejorative akin to witchcraftWizardry was associated with wisdom, knowledge, and wasn’t entirely a pejorative, if seen in association with mastery and information, often of the esoteric sort. Isaac Newton was called ‘the last of the magicians’ due to his esoteric inclinations. The idea that science had nothing to do with religion, spirituality or magic is just wrong.
>>98512483>vastly differentNot really. In medieval day, the modern boundaries dividing religion, natural philosophy (science), and the occult (the arcane) did not truly exist. The word science referred to literally any field or base of information to draw from, and the word science was used with magic plenty of times before the scientific revolution’s repudiation. Educated figures like monks, natural philosophers (who were often monks), and alchemists (again, often monks, or in cahoots with monks) merged faith, empirical observation, and esoteric study into a single pursuit of understanding God’s creation. D&D separates these into rigid, functional mechanical classes for game balance. It is what it is. It’s dishonest, but a game is a game. You could argue strongly that the wizard and the artificer should be merged as well.
I’m shocked how many think Christianity held science back and was anti-intellectual. A lot within the Church had actually supported people like Galileo. The Church was filled with civil infighting much like any other highly layered organization, or nation. The Church did not fight science or reason. Many church leaders and Church aligned scholars built and supported the early framework of modern science, including institutions like Oxford. Internal politics and power struggles played a much more nuanced role in specific conflicts, like the Galileo affair. It was not a battle between faith and reason.
>>98512483“It’s not magic it’s natural”“It’s not magic it’s a miracle”“It’s not magic it’s… um…”The Church was a self hating, self coping, self prosecuting Mages Guild by any other name. Call someone a mage at your own peril, or theirs.
>>98512274Mad libs spell generation as the abstract, contextual description of the effects that vary by the casting and caster mixed in with spell failure and catastrophes. Alternatively having it be some sort of will based consensus focus as a metadescription but the narrative gameplay effects varying by the casting.
>>98512483The origin of the word magic comes from an order of learned, intellectual astrologer-priests lol
>>98512553That sounds like “mother may I”. It withhold extra steps, anon
>>98512633It also has dice!
>>98512537People don’t even know who Aquinas is
>>98511879I would say I don't , I thought I knew , as a specific shorthand for a type of research and to be more broad to a specific form of thought based on looking at stuff mechanistically , logically and academically.but people add more requiriments to science , as well as their own definitions all the time. see wonderfag for an example.
>>98511943>I guess you could descrive as what people see as science as just semi materialistic modern metaphysics , and have science be the practial use and understanding of those metaphysics , but would people really accept for example a super emotion brainded no logic in her brain tarot reader to be a better "scientist" than a genuis giga chad.its logically consistent , and it works well enough as a definition , nothing to say on the argument.but do the people who actually use as an argument , are they actually capable to admit what observation is.for example , in modern fantasy , all the scientists or the best scientist in "fate" magic , might just be a bunch of chill , kind of dumb, good for nothing tarot women , who do tarot tarot once per year , and most of the time they just meditate on random stuff , or muse on art and play videogames. and that would still play under science , you can't just assume that their is a secret more science , science. that works like how hour scientist work.they are the best at the study of reality , they would be the most "science" about it.unless I am going to broad with my definitions.
>>98510874I would say that CAN work , but be carefull of all your audience picking one favorite.the problem is when one gains a meta 4wall break advantage over the other , so the magic is either an illusion or the science is an illusion , in the audiences minds. otherwise it does work
>>98512031>In an actual game the only difference between a wizard and a scifi programmer is the flavor text of the giant glowing hand they're summoningbut their is a clear difference regardless , wizards aren't as cucked as a programmer , they tend to be smart as well , baring the hyper giga chad programers. I would not get it past it for a programmer to kill 10 million people if it was convinient for no other reason that it being convinient implies an autority telling him to do it , I would not assume that for a wizard.regardless of the true nature of magic.
>>98512274the DM and the players can change how the spell works a little bit , for specific timeframes across the campain.
>>98512480>where the various churches don’t need to summon demons, huh?ehhh , I mean , that isn't entirely true.
>>98512517>>98512528>>98512453then why exactly if a setting is more modern , is their a clash between magic and science , is it more so a clash on different forms of spirituality.that all modern stories are a form of mytology or even religios sermons , and that is what the clash happens.whatever God we pray after industrialisation is different to the God you need to pray to make magic work?
>>98513014Let's be frank, most of this kind of "debate" on what is magic and what is science is more "what is the audience agreeing to call science and magic". Like people who believe in ghosts will say it's scientific, wheras someone might not. And right now, there's no direct proof ghosts do or don't exist, so it's down to what people are willing to agree upon. Especially when it comes to a tabletop game.Like the closest I have ever seen to a "scientific" understanding of magic comes from the Fate franchise by Nasu which distinguishes Magic from Magecraft. Magic is the real deal reality-warping shit that has been lost to the ages and is only passed down through bloodlines due to how rare and unteachable it is. Wheras Magecraft is every modern attempt to essentially recreate aka imitate oldschool magic through more modern means through study and combinations of disciplines to get the closest means possible. Ex. There's only one specific form of magic that lets people manipulate souls for the purpose of creating life and-or resurrection, but there's been numerous attempts to recreate it such as the creation of homunculi aka artificial life as well as magic created to place one's soul inside artificial constructs as an attempt to extend one's life and stave off death, for example. They're both instances of "magic" to lay people, but to modern mages one is more scientific than the other due to how unreachable the other is to perform by modern day means inspite of all the records of its existence.
>>98499880all science is actually ancient advanced magic
>>98512122>misses the point entirely>declares victory
>>98513039>wizards aren't as cucked as a programmerreal answer is "depends on your setting", but also, no wizards are exactly as cucked as programmers what are you on about. And the more you try to describe the differences the more the same they sound. Anyway I was thinking about Neon Odyssey when I wrote that. They have scifi reskins of DnD classes and they basically just replaced the wizard with a "gridrunner". They prepare executable spells from their laptop and the spells are mechanically the same but re flavored to be scifi instead.
>>98513089>Let's be frank, most of this kind of "debate" on what is magic and what is science is more "what is the audience agreeing to call science and magic".It's probably also about aesthetics. You could - well probably not anymore because fantasy's not fun like this anymore - see a dude in a pointed hat and robe with stars and moons on it and believe he's a wizard and that when he says weird shit and does proto-Naruto hand gestures he's casting a spell. But you take Albert Einstein and have him do the same shit it's not going to work unless you're some kind of faggot reddit hipster playing Mage.>Like the closest I have ever seen to a "scientific" understanding of magic comes from the Fate franchise by Nasu which distinguishes Magic from Magecraft.D&D arcane magic used to be nerdy techno shit. Wizards carried around books with all their math problems written out and memorized them, and casting a fireball involved solving the same mathematical equation again and having like the ingredients for gunpowder.
>>98513089 is more so how having science and modernise stuff , almost changes what your setting or universe should be about.I guess is difficult to suspend disbelief the closer something is to you. but their is an idea that their are more "advacned" forms of thinking , and if a character is too scientific thye are more advanced.
>>98499880An easy and lazy way to achieve that is to copy alchemy.
>>98513285>no wizards are exactly as cucked as programmers what are you on aboutno , programmers are inherntly more limited , more industrialised , dependent of an extremly big chain of infestructure that not only can change , but changes and it changes to fuck them over.they could go against their nature and be more independent but they don't.
Save all the "Mystery" of magic in how the people practicing try to interpret it. I find it funny how the whimsy fags take the simple idea of being able to observe and replicate a phenomenon as some end all be all of belief or somehow some mysterious aspect of the setting can't exist anywhere else because they are hyper focused on the idea that being able to jazz hand into existence consistantly somehow ruins their imagination.
>>98512972Why are you so obsessed with this person? Are you perhaps mentally unwell? The majority of fantasy runs on wonder. Fantasy is fantastic. Fantastical.
>>98513463>But you take Albert Einstein and have him do the same shit it's not going to work There is a series that is practically that and it is one of the most popular globally.
>>98513514because he is my fren :D
>>98513014Yes that could be described as science, maybe not effective or efficent science, but science none the less. Also sidenote: why the fuck do you type like that, it's like the prose of a stroke victim.
>>98513538Gojo is so damn molestable
>>98512517That is one hell of a seethepost because you don't know the difference between priests, scholars, and charlatans in history.>Isaac Newton was called ‘the last of the magicians’ due to his esoteric inclinations. And Paracelsus tried to ascribe miraculous powers and ineffable mysteries to alchemy for the sake of his own ego, but very few of his peers bought it. You seem to have misunderstood the tendency of scholarly orders and elites to puff up their own reputations with edgy titles and mysticism as being actual black magic practice.>The idea that science had nothing to do with religion, spirituality or magic is just wrong.That's nice, but that's not what you claimed. You claimed all three professions were identical, which is pure and utter bullshit and you know it. You're backpedaling hard and trying to rewrite your own arguments as we speak.
>>98512528>Not really. In medieval day, the modern boundaries dividing religion, natural philosophy (science), and the occult (the arcane) did not truly exist. I'm already sick of this retarded, ignorant load of horseshit and this is only the second mouth I've heard it from. Read a goddamn book sometime. The entire reason why these terms are held separate in the modern day is because people back then, themselves, marked differences between these professions. This is like hearing someone say "knights and men-at-arms are the same, both served in armies, therefore they are identical!" with hideous confidence in their own stupidity. >>98512547It was never confusing. Miracles are from God, magic is bargains with devils and spirits. But the Church had the official policy that magic and witchcraft aren't real.
>>98513737>That is one hell of a seethepost because you don't know the difference between priests, scholars, and charlatans in history.These are all charlatans from the transcendent perspective. Priests are charlatans to themselves as well as others. Scholars can only know so much about the universe without fooling themselves as well. Ignorance is a constant. Foolery is a constant. Lies are a constant. You probably think you’re a lot smarter than you are, eh?
>>98513737>>98513753>seether accuses others of seething whilst seething Cute
>>98513699the efficiency and effective question is the center of it all though.do we act the way we act as a result of our progress or is our progress a result on how we act. >Also sidenote: why the fuck do you type like that, it's like the prose of a stroke victim.I dable in the forbiden arts (shitposting on discord) and it bite me.
>>98513753>It was never confusing. Miracles are from God, magic is bargains with devils and spirits.The wizards of Egypt that Moses faced were just priests of their own respective gods. The Shinto priests performing their rituals to the Kami refer to their doings as spells, or magic, often due to language barriers, although they find the distinction of magic and miracles funny since it borders on pretentiousness from their perspective. Even Buddhism has sorcery to it.
>>98499880They arrive at the same conclusion through different means/substrates.You can make a fireball/explosion organically or with magic. Idk man.
this thread suxorz
>>98499880The main commonality of magic is uncertainty (spell failures, spells that summon a random number of random creatures from a certain plane, prismatic sprays and such effects, vortices that move randomly, similar effects that have a guaranteed intent but uncertain execution, multiple types of potions that look almost the same but have different effects, golems that can go berserk, system shock, mutations), the main commonality of technology is consistency (siege engines that fire in the exact direction they are facing and must be manually adjusted to aim them, lasers with an exact amount of time*intensity that they can hold as charge, nonmagical traps that always work in the exact same way and can thus be bypassed or exploited by people who have seen the same trap before, anything that tracks ammunition, grenades that explode with an exact power set at crafting and cannot be upcast or thrown nonlethally). Magic in a setting must be justified by something which does not exist in real life, and any attempts to create magical technology (potions, spell scrolls) must have a chance of failure which is unknown until they are used (although the magical skill of the crafter and/or user could reduce this to negligibility).Also, to break the trend started by Tolkien, magic/chaos is evil and science/law is good (if your setting has alignment at all).
>>98519436:(
>>98520651>to break the trend started by Tolkien, magic/chaos is evil and science/law is good (if your setting has alignment at all).but isn't magic and science combined that are evil?the one ring was both forged and enchanted , I have not read the books. people are still smiths and stuff , maybe science has an evil edge , maybe they are both evil
>>98499880The best way I would do it is making magic less a super science and more of glitches in reality. So where science is the understanding how things works. Magic is finding the bugs and problems in "reality's code" and fucking with it to figure out what does what.
>>98520651>>98520683In J.R.R. Tolkien’s letters, specifically Letter 155, he clarifies that what humans call "magic" is split into two sides, which he compares to ancient terminologies; magia (physical, substantial effects) and goeteia (perceptive or deceptive effects, or that of enchantment—seeing something as magic). He states that neither form is inherently good or evil; their morality depends entirely on the user's motive. It’s also quite relative, in that the elves don’t see or consider their works and doings as something magical; it’s as natural to them as our own crafts and techniques are, and it doesn’t enchant them nearly the same way as it enchants us (the elves look to the wizards the way men look to the elves). The black machines of Mordor are likened to witchcraft, sorcery, black magic, etc. Magic is a bar. Wizards go out of their way to don the pointy hat and cultivate an image of some magical sage, or stage magician, which they can back up with their knowledge, or abilities. It’s their job, or station, to guide the lesser races like some sort of agent of higher powers; what could be considered a Prime Directive of sorts. They don’t start cults or weaponize ignorance like Sauron does. They are not wizards back home in Valinor, where they’re amongst their own kind, or expected powers. Two sides of the same coin. There’s the perception of magic and the substance that reinforces said perception. Magic is not magic if it’s not seen as magic.
>>98499880>how do you mix magic with science without one eating over the other.Only a truly retarded person would think that science and magic couldnt exist together. Science isnt an opposed thing to rituals and incantations that defy physics to accomplish things. Science is a process of learning and understanding the world and beyond, even magic and spellcraft would be covered under this process. Figuring out magical theory and how it functions is literally science; it's literally how wizards function in D&D, they are magic scientists.The simplistic and retarded desire to force magic to be opposed to science betrays the fact that those people don't understand either magic or science or both.Its an issue of people sneaking in a huge bag of assumptions of how magic and the metaphysics of such magic work that they do not talk about or do not understand themselves.>>98513512The wonderfags and mystery autists are retards who dont understand that magic and spellcraft have never needed mystery or wonder. And the way they talk about scientists lacking wonder and awe, thinking that the scientist must lack it because science dispels the mystery, betrays they've never talked to an actual scientist. Scientists are more filled with awe and wonder at how the world is than any retarded wonderfag who needs to be ignorant to maintain the wonder and awe.>>98520651>The main commonality of magic is uncertaintyI see we're off to a roaring start with a bunch of idiocy confidently asserted. The main commonality of magic is that it accomplishes things by way of words instead of physical action. It can be as consistent as technology. I dont think you understand why each of the things you reference actually happens, youre just a retarded nogames trying to add a stupid argument about magic based on D&Disms.
>>98521367There's a certain autist who likes to use Tolkien and his elves' "magic" (so called by the ignorant towards the wholly normal crafting they do) as an argument for how magic is about perception, but the problem is that Tolkien wrote a fantasy setting without spellcraft or anything much in the way of the supernatural. His elves are preternaturally better than others due to their closeness to the Song of Creation, but they do not and never have cast spells. Not even the "wizards", themselves demigods and angels, cast spells. It is a setting devoid of what most think of when they use the word magic. And is wholly disingenuous to use in reference to settings like D&Ds where spellcraft is common and the supernatural seeps into every nook and cranny.
>>98521600> but the problem is that Tolkien wrote a fantasy setting without spellcraft or anything much in the way of the supernaturalUm. Well. No. He absolutely did. The point is what is a spell, or magic, or supernatural, etc, is a point of perception. God wouldn’t see His miracles as all that miraculous. It’s just Him. What He does. “There is no magic in LotR” means you don’t know what magic is. If you think magic is always necessarily seen as magic to everyone, even by the capital-w wizards, then you don’t know what magic is. It’s not two sided like that. >Not even the "wizards", themselves demigods and angels, cast spells. Gandalf explicitly calls (describes) his abilities, and the artifice/crafts of the elves and the dwarves, as “spells”. That’s what a spell is. A fantastical description for a proper working unknown and arcane to most. The elves refer to the wizards (the ‘istari’) in their own tongue in-meaning the same way humans do. Individuals of profound wisdom and lore. They know things you don’t. They can do things you cannot. Mysterious enigmas. Wandering sages of dubious racial origin, like Odin. That’s the essence of the wizard. Barely any of the elves even know what the wizards are. Very few do. There’s also the ‘Morgoth element’. Dark sorcery does exist in middle-earth, but it’s a consequence of Morgoth/Melkor pouring himself into middle-earth, making it “his one Ring”, and men can tap into this wickedness, which permeates all of nature. It was Tolkien’s way of saying that the planet is tainted. Sauron similarly mentored humans, like the Mouth of Sauron, in black magic (which could also include knowledge of how to work the black machines). Some humans can even access the abilities of artifacts, like the Witch-King’s ring. It’s possible the wizards could impart magic the way Sauron and Melkor did, but choose not to.
>>98522484Hi wonderfag
>>98522604Hello!Another very concerning fact is that, since humans lack inherent power of their own, any instance of a “human sorcerer” in middle-earth is really one who is tapping into the latent power or corruption of Morgoth, even if they don’t know it. Or they use a magical item that has no association with Melkor/Morgoth. Such as the trinkets of the elves. It reminds me of Warhammer. If humans want to compete with more magical races like the elves, then they need to submit to darker, more potent, and more malevolent forces capable of matching them. Otherwise they’re lacking.
>>98520741That’s what I’m aiming for in the setting of my game. There’s nothing inherently different from making circles on the ground to studying the entrails when it comes to one being more “magical”, they both work. It’s just finding the right conditions to do so. It’s more common for people to “cheat” by calling on spirits and beings from other realms to apply their own reality tweaking abilities like fae and daemons and ghosts, or combining multiple practices into one such as working in gyromancy with arithmancy for a more potent if more complicated and volatile result. It does mean the root of all magic is essentially divination, which is just the practice of finding the cracks in reality and interpreting information from it, but that understanding has been lost to the ages by all but the oldest magicians.Problem is making that into a proper fog system, since I have no head for numbers.
>>98522484nta, don't care about if lotr has magic in it or not, fucking weird thing to bother talking about given its got a wizard, an elf, some dwarves and hobbets going on a quest about a magical ring to defeat a great evil magical monster but whatever, that can be someone else's circus. >God wouldn’t see His miracles as all that miraculous. It’s just Him. What He does.This however is an absurdly retarded statement. If its an omnipotent monad experiencing itself as you seem to want to lean into, it necessarily does not see it self at all in the way you want to express it. It would however experience the full and total extent of all things and as such be both simultaneously miraculous and mundane in a manner we're not really equipped to deal with and you for sure aren't given the last few weeks of magic sperging. It is a thing that will be conceptually impossible to you, but nevertheless would exist in the manner.
>>98499880I just have them stay in their respective lanes even where they overlap in basic function. most magic in muh setting is elemental in nature, and both a magician and a machine built for the task can move air essence around to create an electrical discharge as an example, but a machine cannot ever cast spells. a tesla coil makes an electeical discharge, a magician casts lightning bolt. magitech in the sense of "my gun casts fireball" or "I remotely trigger my staff to do X" and such are flatly not possible. this is because magic cannot be done by the inanimate. in turn, this was because I wanted technology and magic to have different roles that are sometimes competitive and other times complimentary, so I wanted them to mostly stay in their respective lanes, though they do softly overlap here or there not by function, but by use.
>>98522700So you agree that God wouldn’t see itself as God the same way humans do. Got it. Humans project on to God when they assume it perceives itself the same way they do. Made in his Image and all. Don’t know why you’re so frustrated.
>>98522700>it would however experience the full and total extent of all things and as such be both simultaneously miraculous and mundaneSure thing. Kind of like how a human can simultaneously see itself as a mundane lifeform AND a divine godlike being to ants—such lowly, pathetic, infinitely lesser creatures. I laugh as I flood their hill! They’re too stupid to build temples so why not?You’re also assuming that God would even be aware of Himself, or us, at all, if He’s the Absolute Totality you imply He is. He might be altogether TOO aware to even DO, or NOT do, anything. Any action it takes is already a part of the total collective scheme of all possibility, including the possibilities of it not taking any possible actions—“this is the universe where God did absolutely fucking nothing”—and anything it does has already happened, constantly. Nothing matters. Everything everywhere every-when all at once.Perhaps our existence and all of its possible trajectories are a vast art project to some higher being who can look at it in its entirety. Artists find wonder in their own art. Or deepest disappointment. But, your post implies that I can’t conceive of God finding His Art wondrous. That’s a bit odd. Biologists find wonder in discovering new life. That’s magic. The essence of magic is wonder, sure, but it is also the wonder, the amazement, in your own doings. Magic is as much about making wonder as it is about finding wonder. Mystery is just one side of it. Magic lies in the mind’s eye and is what you make of it. Anyway. I tend to assume a hypothetical self-aware Godhead would be simultaneously humble and in amazement of itself. But it’s not the same sort of “miraculous” you’d attribute; more so it’s an appreciation for nature, physics, reality, etc, as it is. God is THE physicist.(This post was too long to post originally)
>>98522868>refuses to understand the concept while pretending it supports their retardation Great googly moogly you're dumb. Its the same way and not the same way at the same time. That's how monads work. >bbuubtuuut thatatat's impossiburl! mmmhmmmm downright magical even. I know you're actually too fucking stupid to understand multiple perspective simultaneously as amply demonstrated over the last howeverthefuck many threads of this you've been doing.
>>98522868nta, but you seem to be projecting your own biases and perceptions onto what an all-powerful deity would think by claiming such a being would see it this way or wouldn’t see it that way with only ipyiur own limited frame of reference. Maybe you should consider how egotistical that sounds.
>>98522875Tl;dr wonderfag
>>98522875>Kind of likeNo. Totally different. You no more understand the entirety of experience of the ant than you understand fuck about shit. It in now way implies any of that other shit you wrote either. You're actually too dumb to understand. Its both at the same time even if it appears contradictory to you. Of course your post was too long. You're just fumbling around for anything to support you idiocy.
>>98522911Nope. It’s not totally different. I refuse to project human hubris on to an inhuman being. To do so is to disrespect any hypothetical God. I’m not even a Christian. Christians constantly disrespect their God by assuming God would see himself the same way they do.Very few people are Christian properly.
>>98522911Projecting human traits onto a supreme being is a common philosophical critique. Viewing God as a cosmic ruler who craves human worship resembles a person demanding praise from ants. This perspective isn’t profound it’s just common fucking sense. A true ultimate reality would operate far beyond human ego, power dynamics, and the human need for validation.
>>98522899What’s more egotistical?1) “God acts exactly like a hubristic human demanding fealty!”2) “God is his own vastly inhuman existence totally incomprehensible to our own”The former is far more constraining. God is not human.
>>98522894>>98522899I suggest calming the fuck down.
>>98522894>I know you're actually too fucking stupid to understand multiple perspective simultaneously as amply demonstrated over the last howeverthefuck many threads of this you've been doing.This is ironic when you’ve been raging against magic being one sided. What is magic to one is not magic to another. “Magic will ALWAYS be magic reeee”.Are you fucking retarded? That’s not how the human brain works. Magic isn’t immune to not being seen as magic after a certain point.
>>98522978>>98522995>>98522943>>98522936I suggest not being so fucking dumb but you're unable to do so.
>>98522995This is why they get pissed off when God is brought up since a hypothetical omnipotent being not considering itself magical or divine conflicts with their want for something to always be magical or divine. They then argue that the hypothetical being could totally see itself as magical or divine, but this would only be in the same vein as the physicist considering nature or their creations to be magical or divine, since they’d already know everything perfectly in the scientific sense, and everything to them would be natural, or just reality, physics, as it is. The idea that God is the Ultimate Physicist really agitates. But it’s just the expected logic of God.
>>98522961What's egotistical is claiming "It's a fact God wouldn't think like a human", if only because there's no way to possibly know. Making an assertion one way or the other without definitive proof is equally a sign of unrestraned ego.
>God is NOT a scientist>He successfully created a self contained reality tho >SHUT UPPPPPPPPP
>>98522995Magic isn't real though. It's weird to act like it is when you can't prove it is, too.
>>98523035I’m starting to think that you’re a Christian if you seriously think that God is a bearded old man in the clouds. The higher iq the Christian, the more abstract, mathematical and inhuman their God becomes, to make sense to them.
>>98523046To the hard rationalist magic can’t exist in fiction either outside of the mind’s eye, or the chemistry in the brain, leading up to “wow it’s magic”.There will always be a hypothetical “Oh, it’s just X or Y” point. This same brain chemistry exists in real life… I guess that’s magic for you?
>>98523051Agnostic. Not enough definitive proof to declare YHVH exists or doesn't exist, so I don't waste time saying "God surely thinks like a human/doesn't think like a human" since you'd need to prove he exists first before you start telling me what he's like. If he does.
>>98523059I'm just a dude who plays roleplaying games on the weekends. So no, I don't believe people can learn to cast mind bondage on their dads to make them buy more WOTC slop. And you're weird for bringing brain chemistry into this.
>>98523046>Magic isn’t real thoughLol. You live in an Atlantean-esque era, you ungrateful piece of shit. Magic to us now is just what we CAN’T do. What we can do now would be magical back then. Occult infrastructure (black boxes built on black boxes) is everywhere, and zoomers don’t even know how their phones work. How is science not bloody magic? All scientists are sorcerers to some shade. That's why they seek theories of everything to unify different layers of reality. It's as if scientists believe as-above-so-below and as-within-so-without. Scientists believe in summoning entities that transcend the body like AI and wish to become transhuman themselves. Don't forget scientists' quest for immortality either…and think about their obsession with seeking patterns, their inclination to turn patterns into geometrical representations, and their wish for theory to be beautiful! Scientists might as well wear robes and dissect bodies on altars- no, wait, they're already doing that… Christ, they might as well sacrifice materials in rituals to gain a material back with transcended properties. Oh wait…You dumbasses only think magic in the most superficial sense. You don’t pinpoint the essence of it. It’s everywhere.“Often the greatest magic trick of all, is to make it so others thing it ISN’T magic…”.
>>98523064The likelihood of God being a giant alien most incomprehensible is a lot bigger to me than God being a stereotypical wizard in the sky. That incomprehensible alien might don the image, or a similar image, though. I don’t doubt the possibility that aliens might “cosplay” as learned figures to educate the less educated. Believers in ancient aliens tend to draw these conclusions. See Oannes.
>>98523075I live in the USA. You're living with your head up your ass.>>98523091
>>98523091It's impressive how you manage to completely talk past the person you're lecturing, considering I didn't say anything of the like. Maybe take your medication.
>>98523070>And you're weird for bringing brain chemistry into this.You might not be a very smart person if you think chemistry in the brain has nothing to do with magic. >>98523104That you can’t connect the two posts implies you’re not intelligent enough to put two and two together lol. >considering I didn't say anything of the likeLol. Do you have brain damage? Are you giving yourself memory loss?
>>98523104I’ll help you. The topic of choice here is “Does God act like a human or not act like a human?”. You are in it. One said the other is more likely. You seem to disagree.
>>98523116You seem like the type of man who watched Cygnus declare a plucked chicken to be a man and took it completely at face value with realizing he was being sarcastic.And I'm not the one talking about God being one thing or another, you are wonderfag.
>>98523124All I’m getting from this conversation is that you’re intellectually feeble. Hm.
>>98523129And I'm getting that you're a retard who wastes his time spamming 4chan with your pointless rants nobody ever asked for.
>>98522820very interesting can I ask how is magic seen culturally.
